Hi everyone, I get a slow but steady stream of questions and requests related to the NTP Pool; most of which I'm really no better at answering than most of you who are subscribed to this list. Instead then I can spend that time making the system better.
This mail is to solicit 2 or 3 volunteers to help me out so we can provide better service to everyone. Qualifications needed: Knowledge and (in particular) patience replying to mail with questions like the examples I'll list below. The primary language we use is English, so proficiency in written English is important, but being a native speaker is not (I'm not, as may be obvious). Indeed I'd like if we could help people in their own language if possible and most people don't have English as their first language. Patience is important because while some mails are not particularly polite, I think it's important to always reply politely and as helpfully as possibly (even if briefly). Time needed: Typically a couple hours a week, spread out across the week. More at first to battle the backlog I have built up (oops!). Tools needed: Web browser and email client. Example questions/mails: ## Server operators replying to the automatically generated "your server is not working mail"): * "My server was down, it's back now. Sorry!". I don't always reply to those, but I do check that it is indeed ok now and if I have a minute then say thanks for contributing the server to the system. * "The monitoring server says my server isn't working, but it is!". Other than a few times where IPv6 routing has been bad, there's always a problem with the server. Help the server operator figure out what's wrong. ## Server operators after adding a new server: * "Please help me verify my configuration". So far I always just check that there isn't anything crazy wrong (using pool.ntp.org as the server; restricting public access, etc) and refer people to the NTP newsgroup. This is not really helpful, but honestly I don't know enough about ntpd configuration to be sure I am helpful and either way it's really time consuming. * "I am trying to add my server, but it's not working". Ask the server operator about their firewall configuration. Tell them to make sure ntpd has been running for at least a few minutes before trying to add it. * "My server ended up in the wrong zone". This is pretty rare. I don't allow server operators to change it themselves because sometimes they misunderstand how the system work and want to change it incorrectly. There's a web tool for admins to change the zones; help the server operator make sure they're in the right zones. * "Please change the hostname for my server". The system doesn't use this for anything other than display on various screens and in some of the emails and such. I don't allow server operators to change it because there's already too much confusion if the system can use "dynamic DNS" or otherwise update the IP address of a server via the hostname (no, that wouldn't work). Make sure the server operator understands this and change the hostname with the web tool (the tool verifies that the new hostname points to the IP address of the server). I probably could change this so server operators can self-service this. ## Users (or non-users) contacting the NTP Pool * "You have the wrong time for My Town, My Country". * "Your system is doing daylight saving time wrong!" * "My computer time isn't correct". * etc ... Send them a short reply explaining what the NTP Pool is, that it runs on UTC and to contact support from their operating system or computer vendor. * More or less informed variations on the above or questions on how to use the NTP Pool: Refer to the relevant page on the NTP Pool site or elsewhere. ... and so on and so forth. :-) The benefit to you for volunteering will be: 1) knowing that you're helping provide free and reasonably accurate time service to the world in a scalable and sustainable fashion. 2) You might learn a thing or two, but honestly probably not much compared to the time invested. Also you'll have another bullet-point for your CV/resume. :-) 3) There's no number three, really just the first benefit, so read that again! Reply to me off-list unless you have general questions. I'll update here when I have a few volunteers. Thank you for reading this far! Ask -- http://askask.com/ _______________________________________________ pool mailing list pool@lists.ntp.org http://lists.ntp.org/listinfo/pool
